It seems at least one croaker in Russia is advocating to have a bunch of properties, including Alaska, turned back over to Russia. Good luck with that. Excerpt:
This week, Russian Parliament member Oleg Matveychev — known as the “Kremlin’s spin doctor” due to his recurring role as a spokesman for senior Kremlin officials — announced a set of ludicrous demands for the United States in retaliation for American sanctions.
Ignoring the reality of Putin’s aggression and his forces’ three week war against the people of Ukraine, Matveychev said on Russian state TV that “We should be thinking about reparations from the damage that was caused by the sanctions and the war itself, because that too costs money and we should get it back.”
Yes, the man representing the regime that chose to invade Ukraine and has since lost not-insignificant numbers of tanks and soldiers to Ukrainians defending their country, thinks the United States needs to pay reparations to Russia.
Matveychev also called for a “return of all Russian properties, those of the Russian empire, the Soviet Union and current Russia, which has been seized in the United States.” Yep, Russia is demanding Alaska be returned to Russia despite the fact that Russia sold the territory that would later become America’s 49th state to the United States in 1867 for $7.2 million.
I can think of a few tens of thousands of armed Alaskans who might differ with that plan, myself among them.
What this horse’s ass Matveychev forgets is that the U.S. didn’t conquer Alaska, taking it by force; we purchased it from a Russian government that was chronically short of cash. It was a transaction mutually agreed on by both parties, one of whom was the duly constituted Russian government of the time. Plenty of Americans termed it “Seward’s Folly,” thinking that the U.S. had just bought a frozen wasteland, but that estimation was quickly overturned by the discovery of gold – and, later, gas and oil.
What all that boils down to is that Alaska is ours, asshole, and it’s going to stay that way.
Our Governor replied:
Good luck with that! Not if we have something to say about it. We have hundreds of thousands of armed Alaskans and military members that will see it differently. https://t.co/ji0Hiza1TE
— Governor Mike Dunleavy (@GovDunleavy) March 15, 2022
I think the good Governor is understating things just a little. Meanwhile, Matveychev is free to demand in one hand, shit in the other, and see which hand fills up first.
